20:00

to player agency. We've seen a lot

20:02

of expansion in fifth edition

20:04

over the years, obviously, with new book releases

20:07

and things like that, but there's been so

20:09

many player options that come into effect, whether

20:12

it's a player race or

20:14

class options, subclass options, feats,

20:17

things like that. I

20:19

wanted to kind of touch on, does

20:21

that something, how heavily is customization considered

20:27

in the modern gaming

20:30

space these days? Is that something you can speak

20:32

on? The video game space or

20:34

the TTRPG space? I suppose both. When

20:37

you're talking about least common denominator, I've seen

20:39

some people kind of be like, there's too

20:41

much customization versus not, people

20:44

that don't mind. I feel like people

20:46

that are new to the game, it can be

20:48

a little bit overwhelming, especially if you don't have

20:50

the Lord of the Rings touchstone that a lot

20:52

of people have coming into the game. What's

20:57

your feel about that? How do

20:59

you feel about customization in general

21:01

in video games or even tabletop?

21:04

I'm all for customization up until

21:06

the point of pet entry. Once

21:08

it becomes pedantic to customize something, forget

21:11

it. But let's

21:13

look at Baldur's Gate. A

21:15

lot of the girls who are playing

21:18

Baldur's Gate love it because they can

21:20

customize everything. They can change the clothes,

21:22

they can change a starion's clothes, they

21:24

can change Gail's clothes and Shadowheart. Everybody

21:26

loves that, right? And so that's huge.

21:29

I'm embarrassed to admit how much time I spent

21:31

in the store to just switching out outfits on

21:33

my old buddy. Same. I was

21:35

like, ooh, this is the Sims now. I was like, oh,

21:37

I love that dress. I love it. I

21:40

love that. And the

21:43

fact that you can change everybody's classes, I think

21:45

is fantastic. And that's not presented as the cornerstone

21:47

of Baldur's Gate, but it's an option and you

21:49

can do that. But let's even look at

21:52

Destiny. Let's look at Helldivers. Everybody wants to

21:54

have their own Destiny character, their own Helldivers

21:56

character. They want it to feel like them,

21:58

right? And so that's a huge. part

22:01

of getting people to feel like they are

22:03

in and invested.

22:06

And so I would say customization gets people invested.

22:08

That's a huge part of it. Now,

22:11

do you really want to customize everything? No, but you

22:13

want to allow there to be

22:16

availability to customize. Now, kind of getting

22:18

back to your point about how much

22:20

expansion there's been with D&D and things

22:23

like that. There comes a

22:25

point when players do get

22:27

overwhelmed. And narratively,

22:31

people want boundaries. A

22:33

lot of people get very scared when they

22:35

start, you know, TTRPGs because they can do

22:37

anything. And so they're thrown in and it's

22:39

like, okay, what do you want to do?

22:42

And they sit there and they're in freeze and they're like,

22:44

oh, what can I do? It's

22:47

like anything. Okay.

22:52

I don't know. I don't know. I'm panicking,

22:54

you know. And so narratively, there's

22:57

a huge, huge incentive. And again, I

22:59

think this is why the narrative

23:01

of Baldur's Gate works and meshes so

23:03

well as compared to, let's say,

23:05

Zelda, like Breath of the Wild,

23:08

which doesn't have a narrative like it has a narrative,

23:10

but there's not really a strong story. There's

23:12

no narrative, a huge narrative element. It's

23:14

a fantastic game, but it's not

23:16

a narrative game or even what's

23:20

alloys game? Horizon

23:22

Zero Dawn. Horizon Zero Dawn in

23:24

Horizon Forbidden West. Yeah. Very

23:27

open world. But even then, kind

23:29

of the narrative felt shaky to me because

23:31

it's so open that I don't have a

23:33

directed storyline and I can kind of go

23:35

anywhere and do anything in any order, which

23:37

is fine. But I want things to react

23:40

based on that and it doesn't. They couldn't commit

23:42

to it because it was so big and open.

23:45

Whereas Baldur's Gate was narrow. It had

23:47

very, very good boundaries on

23:49

what you could do when and where, but

23:52

it didn't feel that way again, like you said, because

23:54

it's so dense. And so players

23:57

want boundaries. And I think... Even

24:00

GM's want boundaries. So you're throwing book and book and

24:02

book and book and simple minutes of a month, which

24:04

is all fantastic It's fantastic to have all of that

24:07

stuff But that's not

24:09

agency and that's not direction That's

24:12

on the GM to do and

24:14

that can be very daunting when you don't

24:16

know how to place narrative boundaries in

24:19

your game Yeah, sure. I would say

24:21

that's the big focus there. Yeah, I see

24:23

that conversation always manifests Like well, what world

24:25

are we playing in and then then you

24:28

have your box, right? Right your creative boundaries

24:30

are set as soon as that that conversation

24:32

starts. Oh, yeah, it's usually like hey We're

24:34

gonna start a game build whatever you guys

24:36

want and then wait, let's start getting the

24:38

questions. Yeah Yeah, yeah, it's just exactly and

24:41

it's this weird standoff because the GM's

24:43

like do whatever you want create your

24:45

character And then the players are like

24:47

what world are we in? I

24:50

need boundaries to set up my character I

24:52

want to know what the world context is.

24:54

It's so players need context from the GM

24:57

And so I would say for GM's don't

24:59

be afraid to set up those

25:01

boundaries and like hey like, okay Well,

25:04

okay, maybe you want something a little more steam punk

25:06

ish. Okay, I can I can rotate that I can

25:08

I can change that A little bit. So of course,

25:10

it's always a negotiation But

25:13

yeah set those boundaries up. They're very important.

25:16

Yeah. Yeah, I very much subscribe to the

25:18

idea of creativity flourishes in a box Mm-hmm.

25:20

Yeah, that's what I found over over

25:23

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27:45

history is one of my favorite subjects

27:47

and I have a particular affinity for

27:49

mythology, folklore, and fables. D&D and

27:51

other tabletop RPGs, but D&D

27:54

in particular has mythology, folklore, and

27:56

fables of ancient civilizations like all

27:58

over it. It's It's all over

28:00

it. From the monsters of

28:02

ancient Greece to the creatures of the North Sagas and

28:05

more, obviously these elements are

28:07

wildly popular. I

28:09

love elves and giants and manticores and dragons, and

28:11

I'm sure all of us here do. But

28:14

what do you think is gained by

28:16

D&D's use of these ancient elements, and

28:18

what, if anything, do you think might

28:20

be lost? Oh boy.

28:23

This is a huge, like I could talk for hours about

28:25

this in particular. For sure. I'll

28:28

start with what is lost, because

28:30

I think that's the easiest part to answer, because there is

28:32

so much gained. There's so much gained. But

28:36

what is lost, I think, is the

28:39

particular context around each one of those

28:43

pieces of lore or beasts or whatever,

28:45

right? Because they all have their own

28:48

context. And so all of

28:50

a sudden, when you're doing Egyptian gods

28:52

plus the Norse gods plus the Greek gods,

28:54

and they're all in one universe, things tend

28:56

to homogenize. And that's something that Mac feels

28:58

very strongly about, and that I also feel

29:00

very strongly about, is that, okay, we all

29:02

know what a dwarf is now. We all

29:04

know what a halfling is. Okay, why can't

29:06

we just call it a hobbit? Oh,

29:08

because that's copyrighted, okay. So, you know,

29:11

halflings, elves, dwarves,

29:14

they're all so in place

29:17

now. There's not a lot of

29:19

room in modern pop culture

29:21

and media to kind of

29:24

break the mold there, because Tolkien

29:27

established it, and then Gygax established it,

29:29

and it's just a pillar now of

29:32

the fantasy genre, which I'm fine with, that's

29:35

fantastic. And then

29:37

you start smooshing everything else in, and

29:40

okay, we're putting like the fairies in,

29:42

okay, and then this and this and

29:44

that, and it becomes homogenous. And it

29:46

starts to lose what made it really

29:48

interesting, especially to Tolkien, for instance, in

29:50

the first place. And I speak to

29:52

Tolkien in particular, one because I did

29:55

way too many classes on him. There

29:58

is 12 volumes. You

48:00

know, I wanted to balance it with like they're

48:02

like maybe like a hollowing mechanic where you don't

48:04

want to die too many times But

48:07

um, but that's something I've been messing with Roguelike

48:10

or something there there's a little

48:12

bit of road like element to it as well But

48:14

a little different Dark Souls is a little different than

48:16

that Yeah,

48:20

let's see I Really

48:22

enjoy the the home base

48:25

that Vason provides in its

48:27

world So Vason is a

48:30

published by Free League. It's

48:32

a turn of the century turn of the 19th to 20th century

48:37

Nordic folklore Role-playing

48:40

so it takes all of this medieval

48:42

stuff but keeps it in that Victorian

48:44

period or like slightly past Victorian period

48:48

where you've got You

48:50

know the werewolves in the hills and the

48:52

fairies in your garden and things like that

48:54

and it's sort of Witcher vibes because you

48:56

as the player are going

48:59

out and taking on these contracts to

49:02

Resolve conflicts with the local folklore and

49:05

that doesn't mean kill them. It just

49:07

means resolve them So you have these

49:09

beautiful moments where okay Maybe

49:11

the locals have angered a very protected site for

49:14

the elves or the fairies or whatever and you

49:16

get to resolve that Or

49:19

okay, maybe very much I

49:22

was saying yeah, that's very much like

49:24

the Witcher vibes for sure. Yeah,

49:26

and I love that but the

49:28

cool part about that is that They

49:32

give you a home base, which is this

49:34

biggest state And it's

49:36

very spooky and you inherit it or whatever

49:38

and then you unlock certain parts of it

49:40

and that gives you perks So if you

49:43

like unlock the greenhouse Then you can go

49:45

in and create botanical cures and you know

49:47

elixirs and things like that that you can

49:49

then take on your little Monster of the

49:51

week missions. So it's very episodic

49:53

and it's very like come back to the home base explore

49:56

the home base Which

49:58

I really like I love that in video games games

52:00

because like dialogue is dialogue and you have a

52:02

fun conversation but dialogue is also gameplay yeah

52:04

so I like to include that yeah I think

52:06

I think dialogue can be daunting to to newer

52:09

players and DMS as well because it's like you

52:11

know once dialogue happens anyone could say anything and

52:13

then who knows what this goes but

52:15

um to that I say just dive in

52:18

just dive in you're gonna have a good

52:20

time yeah dialogue is gameplay and it

52:22

should have an effect and choices

52:24

again they matter um

52:26

so in the end we're all

52:28

just a bunch of nerds looking to game

52:30

it up and get adventure some what are

52:32

some tabletop world playing games that you guys

52:35

are playing these days and what video games

52:37

have you been putting hours into oh boy

52:41

it's been tricky for us to have

52:43

time for a full TTRPG with the

52:45

podcast and with the Kickstarter going on

52:47

right now I feel but basin

52:50

is the one that I just keep

52:52

going back to even if I'm not

52:54

playing it I'm paging through it and

52:56

I'm coming up with ideas and things

52:58

like that so that's my go-to recommendation

53:00

because it's not high

53:02

medieval fantasy but it's

53:04

kind of gritty industrial

53:08

folklore fantasy so that's

53:10

that's my favorite how do you spell

53:12

that vason how do you spell that

53:14

VA e SCN so yeah

53:16

I think the technical pronunciation is

53:19

basin but you can say like

53:21

bison there's there's three different

53:23

ways to say the AE depending on

53:25

whether you're doing old English Latin or

53:27

modern English not to mention Swedish so

53:30

I can't pronounce this word well

53:33

we'll go we'll go ahead and put the link

53:35

in the description to yes to their website for

53:37

sure fabulous yeah so I'd highly recommend that one

53:41

video games I mean Baldur's

53:43

great Baldur's Gate hands down master

53:46

class of storytelling what

53:51

is it I think it's called dirge is

53:53

also kind of a

53:55

Nordic horror game

53:58

where you're in this little fishing boat